Frontiers Music Srl has announced the release of a new exciting album written and performed by the two Norwegian Rock Stars Jorn Lande and Trond Holter entitled “DRACULA – Swing of Death” on January 23rd in Europe and January 27th in North America. Watch the video below.

This exciting concept album was inspired by the life of Count Vlad the III, Prince of Wallachia, widely known as Vlad, The Impaler or by his patronymic name Vlad Dracul(a). The whole story explores the inner struggle inside the multifaceted and engorging character that this mysterious 15th Century personality was, while also taking into account some of the metaphysical aspects that passed into literature, forming the whole basis of the vampire mythos.

Jorn Lande – who impersonates Dracula, is the main character of the album and the female parts are sung by Norwegian singer Lena Fløitmoen (representing Mina/Lucy from the Bram Stoker book). The drama of the story reveals Dracula’s inner battle, where he still remembers what true love was, and as he wandered the Earth for centuries with a thirst for blood, his loneliness and desire to be able to love again has led him to the brink of insanity. In the original Bram Stoker version, he leaves Transylvania by ship and when he meets Lucy’s best friend, she reminds him so much of his first love Mina, that he becomes obsessed. His mission is to take her as his bride, and make her Queen of the dark.

Musically, “Swing of Death” is not like a typical rock opera or musical, since it has no storyteller or too many long instrumental parts and intros. It is an album that gets to the point with no detours and even if it exposes some diverse musical landscapes, it does include catchy and melodic songs with commercial radio potential. Vocally this release gives you everything from Jorn Lande’s past extensive catalogue all in one album. Jorn’s ability to be innovative and original while at the same time showing where his roots came from, is truly unique.

Jorn and Trond’s musical influence when creating this epic masterpiece came mostly from 70’s era Meat Loaf, Queen, Alice Cooper, plus some other Classic and more contemporary Hard Rock elements. All mixed together with their own modern musical heavy rock style, Dracula “Swing of death” is something extraordinary. The lyrics are not limited to the old days of Bram Stoker’s era and could easily be a Dracula story of today.

Track listing: Hands of Your God; Walking On Water; Swing of Death; Masquerade Ball; Save Me; River Of Tears; Queen of the Dead; Into the Dark; True Love Through Blood (Instr.); Under The Gun

Frontiers Music Srl is pleased to announce the release of the anticipated fourth album from ALLEN / LANDE, the vocal alliance between Norwegian Jorn Lande and powerhouse Symphony X / Adrenaline Mob vocalist Russell Allen entitled “The Great Divide” on October 17th in Europe and October 21st in North America.

Following three successful albums written, played and produced by Magnus Karlsson (of Primal Fear/Starbreaker), the new album “The Great Divide” offers a substantial change in that former Stratovarius guitarist and main composer, Timo Tolkki took on the challenge to write and produce the new recording. Tolkki also performs all instrumentation on the album except for drums, which are handled by Jami Huovinen.

Work on the album started in late 2013 when the first songs were demoed and sent to the two singers, who loved the direction of the new music. Also, for the first time, Jorn Lande has contributed vocal melodies and lyrics to the album. The final result is certainly outstanding and the crisp mixes from Dennis Ward (PC 69, Place Vendome, Unisonic) have delivered an amazing sounding album. Stunning cover art created by French artist Stan Decker completes the package of the most eagerly anticipated Melodic Metal release of 2014!

The opening track from the album, “Come Dream With Me”, is available for streaming via Soundcloud via this link:

Two more songs from the album will be unveiled in the coming weeks prior to the album’s release.

“The Great Divide” tracklisting includes the following songs: Come Dream With Me; Down From The Mountain; In The Hands Of Time; Solid Ground; Lady Of Winter; Dream About Tomorrow; Hymn To The Fallen; The Great Divide; Reaching For The Stars; Bittersweet.

Three (yes three) new videos for the song ‘Overload’ from JORN‘s eighth and latest studio album entitled Traveller have been uploaded to YouTube. Check out footage from the Czech Republic and the Netherlands below:

In November, Jorn parted ways with drummer Willy Bendiksen.Jorn leader Jorn Lande states: “After many years of working together, I am sorry to announce that Willy Bendiksen will no longer be playing with us. We wish him all the best and good luck for the future. A new drummer will be announced.”

Mark Dean of Myglobalmind webzine recently conducted an interview with former HELLOWEEN and current MASTERPLAN guitarist Roland Grapow. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Myglobalmind: Do you think that MASTERPLAN has exceeded the personal expectations that you had when you first started?.

Roland: Especially with the first two albums, I think that we achieved a lot of respect and a lot of surprise from people. Nobody really expected anything so strong from us. I guess even the HELLOWEEN guys didn’t even know when they fired us that maybe we would be just go out of the business. After the first album, I was very happy that we came back with such a powerful return. It was such a big success for that time. Nowadays sales are on the way down every year and there are other problems. We have just released our fifth album and I think that over the years, there has been a stable degree of good quality within the band. There have been some big lineup changes, singer problems… It still sounds like MASTERPLAN for my taste.

Myglobalmind: You referred there briefly to the lineup changes that MASTERPLAN have undergone . Do you find that rotation of the band personalities is necessary for its evolution and development?

Roland: I think that its basically hard to explain why we always had singer changes. When we started MASTERPLAN with Jorn [Lande], a lot of people had warned me to be careful saying that he was very difficult. That he was never happy or satisfied with things. I think that the only thing that he really was concentrated on was trading on a solo career called JORN. Everything else for him was just a side project; he never saw MASTERPLAN as his main band. It was especially bad for me as I had put so much love, work and so much feeling for this band. I had given everything to make the band big. Jorn never did anything for us for this band. He never even said anything great about MASTERPLAN. That is not nice; you need a really good team behind you which loves this work. It’s the same as a company — if someone is not dedicated totally 100%, it doesn’t matter what a great voice he has. You stay on the same level, but now with a totally different lineup, we have a really big chance of getting further now. We can play live again, and have already played a couple of shows. There are a lot of shows booked, including some festivals, and we are planning a tour in October. That just wasn’t happening for about six years, which was quite terrible, to be honest. It is definitely very important to play live. It doesn’t make sense to make great music with people saying, “You are a great band.” If you don’t show yourself, nobody can fully get that feeling. Personally, I need it as well — if there is a band that I really like, but I don’t get to see their live performance, it doesn’t give me that last 30%. I think that is really important to get more closer to the band. Especially sometimes when you think that a song is OK, but if you see that band performance of the song live then you will always remember it. It’s like an imprint on your brain or something. There is also some elements of difference, with the solo parts and some improvising. Sometimes we shorten some things which are too long for the live situation. Or we make parts for the audience to sing along. The next plan in the near future is to make a live album or DVD. MASTERPLAN now have five albums out after 10-12 years so we want to release a DVD or something definitely.

Myglobalmind: Do you then prefer to focus creatively on looking forward to the future, rather than back to the past?

Roland: Sometimes I like to look back, but am more thinking of the future. I am not one of these guys sitting at home thinking back that was such a good time. Of course we had a great time in HELLOWEEN, but also some terrible times. The same is true of MASTERPLAN. However, MASTERPLAN is the kind of band that makes me prouder than HELLOWEEN, even though we did great work in HELLOWEEN. Everything that I am doing now is the result of being a longtime member of this really professional band. We work with Sanctuary, English management. We have toured many times with [IRON] MAIDEN, so we have had good experiences. That really helps you a lot for the future. Definitely that arrangement and also working with great producers, who have really lifted the MASTERPLAN sound.

“Traveller”, the new video from Norwegian hard rock singer Jorn Lande, can be seen below. The song is the title track of Lande‘s new album, which will be released on June 11 in North America and June 14 in Europe via Frontiers Records.

Considered one of the greatest legends in rock, and by many as the best male rock singer of the millennium, Lande never seems to stop producing music, and is back with yet another slab of classic first-division heavy rock. “Traveller” is definitely a suitable title to fit this gifted and creative viking’s extreme productivity.

During his almost-30-year-long career, his albums have sold millions. He managed to release close to 40 albums with various bands/projects in the past decades, and “Traveller” is his eighth studio album under the Jorn banner. Some say he has passed his successors by his gift of being versatile, and ability to not get stuck in the political frames of the music business. A true independent “freebird” hammering his legacy in stone as he goes, with a band of grounded and solid craftsmen to back up his hurricane force voice.

This album represents the first product of the pairing of Jorn Lande and the new JORN guitarist Trond Holter (WIG WAM, DREAM POLICE). The result is eleven new songs encompassing a variety of moods and styles, with Lande‘s voice shining through memorable anthems, backed by wonderful grooves and tightly-executed classic and melodic heavy metal. “This album has all the elements of the Jorn legacy,” says Lande. “It is heavy, but still very melodic and experimental, and it really rocks! As usual we haven’t spent much time analyzing the material before recording it, this is an album about life, doom and death reflecting on what I know and thoughts about what I don’t.”

Jørn: “‘I Came To Rock’ [from 2012’s ‘Bring Heavy Rock To The Land’] was something I thought would be cool to add some strings to, and so we tried. Some songs really invite you to make an orchestral arrangement. I just felt that songs like ‘I Came To Rock’ were perfect for that. Even without any keyboards or anything on the original version, it still feels like it could be something more bombastic, and that’s how I got the idea. With other tracks like ‘Behind The Clown’ [from 2004’s ‘Out To Every Nation’] for example — which is an older JORN track — it’s an era which was kind of a more experimental time, an era when I experimented more with various musical landscapes. That song was also a candidate. It wasn’t a typical song for a JORN album, because it was more like a ballad. I used to enjoy the wonderful Kate Bush a lot when I grew up, which is a big contrast to the heavy rock and metal I do today or perform today.

“Yeah, the rest is history, basically. It turned out great, and a friend of mine who’s very clever with arranging these things helped me out. I talked to my label and they liked the idea, too, to select a few other songs. We didn’t want to do a ‘best-of’ release, because some of the songs don’t fit that well with an orchestra anyway. You could say that I wanted to bring some diversity to the album, and also to bring some of these songs to the surface. We tried to choose some of the more rare tracks, tracks that might be forgotten or are on later albums. Usually people remember the video songs, singles and stuff. So yeah, they deserve a second chance. That’s basically how it started.”

On the birth of heavy metal:

Jørn: “In the early ’70s, there weren’t really any metal bands. Maybe there was something called heavy metal that was similar to heavy metal. Some people say that heavy metal started with bands like LED ZEPPELIN, BLACK SABBATH, but I think that heavy metal started in the late ’70s to early ’80s with bands like JUDAS PRIEST and IRON MAIDEN. I think before that was hard rock, and experimental rock. Distorted guitars weren’t really distorted either, so that way of playing and being able to get the heavy metal sound right was one that evolved in the late ’70s. Just listen to what Eddie Van Halen [VAN HALEN] did with the guitar when he first started playing — his playing was something totally new. At one time the guitarist in BOSTON [Tom Scholz] invented something called the Rockman, which was a small, little box that made a certain sound. It was distorted; it wasn’t too thick and big, but it had this kind of crunchy, great feel and sound. I think that’s when guitarists were able to play faster, and could really do more on a technical level.

“I think before, in the early ’70s, when I was a kid, nobody heard about something called heavy metal. Not even heavy rock, or hard rock. It was just rock music. DEEP PURPLE was rock music, URIAH HEEP was rock music. NAZARETH, SLADE, SWEET; it was all rock music. It wasn’t separated, at least where I come from. I don’t know about the U.K., but people didn’t really separate the styles in the same way. It wasn’t like today with thousands of genres and subgenres, like soft metal, nu-metal, black metal, nu-black metal, thrash metal, speed metal. I don’t even know all of the names, but some of them I’ve learnt along the way. [laughs] I don’t even know all of the styles that are supposed to have been invented in the last ten, 20 years. I prefer to say that even BLACK SABBATH was heavy rock music, but I don’t think the word ‘heavy’ was really a term that was used back then. Maybe some did, but it definitely wasn’t a common way of addressing BLACK SABBATH.”

On the timing of the release of “Dio” in 2010, a tribute album to the late Ronnie James Dio [BLACK SABBATH, DIO, RAINBOW]:

Jørn: “It definitely wasn’t the best time to release the album, but some of the tracks on that album were from 2007 and the rest were from 2009. It wasn’t the best thing that happened, that the album came out so soon after Ronnie‘s passing. Then again, a lot of tributes were made afterwards. I think it was obvious that many of these tributes were really done because people wanted to benefit from what had happened. I think when we evaluated the situation, since the release had already been scheduled for a long time… I spoke to my record company, and we agreed that it was better to release the album as planned rather than wait four months, and then release it. It isn’t possible to make an album like that… If you know the album, you know how it sounds and everything. It isn’t possible to have a production like that in a month, or a few weeks.”

On the departure of guitarist Tore Moren and bassist Nic Angileri, and the arrival of new JORN members Trond Holter [guitars] and Bernt Jansen [bass]:

Jørn: “Tore always wanted to do something on his own, and there were also some discussions and conflict in the band. We had been playing together for many, many years. I guess we just had a different view on things, on how to continue. He basically left himself, which I guess was the result of our disagreements. Nobody got fired or anything from the band; it was his own wish to leave, based on our discussions. In the last couple of years we’ve been talking about the direction of the band and how to work and how to do things, even if it was in a live touring context, or if it was how to make an album, how to write, and what to do with certain things within this band. I guess that’s why.

“When we had a new guitarist, we had a bass player living nearby where I live, a really talented one. They were good friends, and he showed up at rehearsals together with the new guitar player. In the end, we just had to find out what to do. It really worked well. I think Nic played great on the album that he did last year with us; he played great on the tours and all the shows that he did, and he’s a great guy. It’s just we felt that it would work much better in the big picture to also include a new bass player, so we sat down to talk to Nic. Yeah, of course, it’s one of those things that sometimes you don’t like to do, talking to people about certain things and then telling people that it’s not gonna work anymore. I don’t like to beat around the bush; I like to be frank with these things.”

On his forthcoming studio album:

Jørn: “It’s less experimental than some of the earlier albums. I think the last couple of albums or three have been a development towards a more classic-rock-oriented sound, moving back to where we came from. Like I mentioned earlier, the experimentation is something which belongs in the past right now. I don’t feel that the most important thing is to try to reinvent the wheel or something, and try to discover new musical aspects of myself. I think what I need to do now is to really find the best recipe for the band. Where are we at our best? When do I perform at my best? In what type of style? Is it the simple rock music that we grew up with? I think we discovered that by not trying to go out of where we came from, and not trying to do something new… Which isn’t really possible, but I think that many bands desperately try to be original and to claim that they discovered something new.”